According to its mission, ILIESI carries out research in the large field of the history of philosophical and scientific ideas and related lexical structures in the framework of the European tradition from Antiquity to Early Modern Age. To this aim, our institute largely employs digital methods for the analysis and treatment of texts or textual corpora in addition to the more traditional approaches offered by philology and textual hermeneutics. Combining these various research approaches, i.e. history of ideas, lexical analysis of texts, and digital Humanities, has always been a distinctive feature of ILIESI’s activities, which made it a unique case in the scholarly landscape at the international level.

The Institute’s outcome includes critical essays, text-editions, data‐bases and textual platforms, lexical analysis, and the edition of indexes, concordances and lexica as well. In recent time, new research lines in specific areas have been added to the institute’s portfolio, such as those in the field of papyrology (often related to the interdisciplinary methods of archaeology of writing), in various aspects of migration studies, in the study and lexicography of neologisms in contemporary Italian, in the safeguarding of cultural heritage in situations of serious risk or danger (of natural or anthropic origin).

ILIESI publishes three series of volumes (Elenchos, Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, ILIESI digitale) and two journals («Elenchos», «Lexicon Philosophicum»), while offering its scholarly patronage to the journals «Bruniana & Campanelliana» and «Aristotelica».